


Yet Another Deal

by Honicomb



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 05:57:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15357753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Honicomb/pseuds/Honicomb
Summary: Gandalf hollowed his cheeks around the tube of a wooden pipe, the words emitting from the depths of his throat like a horn; a croon; a distant bellow. “And you can imagine just how joyous the wicked imp had been when he found himself two lovely burglars to do it for him.”Rumpelstiltskin has decided he needs the One Ring, and he has just the piece to play on Archie Hopper to get the deal started.





	Yet Another Deal

**Author's Note:**

> This was intended to be a very long story, perhaps over the length of a novel, and upon request, I would be interested in picking it back up. I've got my heart talking to me on this one.

**AA. Before.**

There was rain in the fields. It soaked the ground and colored the grass in darker, stranger hues beneath its weight. The rain, Jiminy thought — why, it drowned the ladybugs and engorged the soil around the delicate hills of ants; filled the moist, tight caves of worms with sticky coldness. The rain was turning the soft, lush grass into a minefield of ashen mirrors — dark things that lifted the face of the sky up to itself in weak reflections, perpetual showers mixing the colors as if they were potion ingredients. Water outstretched thick arms into the wooded areas where the pools spilled and worked at lifting fallen logs. Jiminy could find the tip-tops of houses through the broken green brushes if he had half a mind to glance in their direction. He knew where they were. A number of years of dragging the cart through this black trail, and Jiminy had come to grasp just how close the little village was in relation to the red wagon. It was where the wagon always stopped, this little patch of grass. It was encircled by smooth rocks and bushes with aromatic honeysuckles, and the weeds tangled in the dark wheels as a weak black cherry tree dropped heavy fruits into the clearing, woodland creatures spitting seeds into the dirt and piling hordes of sugar in their lairs in the bushes. 

Jiminy cast his eyes upward at the soft black shadows in the rubbered twill linen, seeing water seep slowly through the unfortunate weaving; spotting fallen cherries speckling the overhanging fabric in coin-sized dots where they hadn’t rolled together and created dark dips. There was no fire rolling gently atop the candle spics. The red disks of candle wax that lay in precarious rows along the narrow wood shelves had been extinguished many hours ago, as the sun was hidden and the comfort of blankets and hay was a more welcoming prospect to his parents than the carriage's flooding box seat. Jiminy sat in front of their heaviest jackets and robes, twisting a rigid metal marionette screw like a small flag in his fingertips. Red wooden boxes of puppets rose up to his left and spilt a shadow upon the sleeping figures further in the car. 

And then what would he do, Jiminy wondered, when his old man opened his sharp blue eyes and searched left and right for his hat before waking his wife with a sharp shoulder prod and a mischievous smile? What would Jiminy do when the He’d remained awake. Their retirement to sleep was a restful thing for him, though he didn’t have the heart to quite admit it even in the safety of his heart and his mind. Rain drenched the tip of his boot. Crookedly positioned under the dark and humid coverage of the linen roof, Jiminy felt rather like a mother bird hiding eggs in a nest. It was an unnatural feeling, that, but not to Jiminy in particular. He was free of distraction and contemplative, not particularly confident and yet all too mentally prepared for most things. He was a protector of sorts, though he lacked the reputation and the physicality to live up to such a title. And so he dragged his eyes over the nearby dark fields and watched the world be bathed in the rain’s white speed; saw smoke depart from its cooling coals and evade the flooding stone circles of bonfires in the village. It was cold and he held an odd white sheet, cut in dysfunctional manners; stained odd colors by confusing accidents, to his face, his legs chilled beneath simple damp trousers. Would there be lighting bugs in the night, he wondered, when the skies reduced the thunder to a golden-white roll above the clouds? He thought of how, should the rain cease to fall, the elders in the villages would light their torches and check their fires and cattle, making their simple cottages a clear target for burglaries.

A woman stood upright in the mud and straightened her dress, kneeling in the way of a mirror and applying pale powder to mask the health in her face? When his father wrapped an arm around him and rasped utterly fantastical tales of money and gold into his ear, what would he do then? He pondered the question for a mere moment, and his mind trapped the solution as soon as it came, the small silver screw a cold thing in his hands. Why, he would run. Before their chests raised with filling breaths and their eyes came drowsily open, Jiminy would be as gone as he would if they’d never conceived him. 

Jiminy saw grey cumulous clouds, dense and heavy in the sky, like a dark grid though the simple weaving of the roof. He saw yellow, biting swords of light tangling in the dark of space and suffocating in rain and blackness. It was a beautiful evening, he thought, and even through the thick black covering, he could see his world for what it was — a place of cherry trees and ripe, tangy foods; a world of madness and soft wooden doors and floors and ceilings that could so easily be turned into deep blue star maps if only he turned his head the right way to imagine it. Even as his old man pinched his hat and snorted at the stars and the wind and the billowing sweet green tree canopies, Jiminy could see the dying maple trees for their sap and he could smell the rotting flowers for their purity.

There was once an hour like this — a sweet-smelling hour with dark shadows and glowing stones and trampled flower petals secreting wild smells under their mules’ feet — and Jiminy leaned against the spoils of that hour as if hiding them out of his own sight. Miles and miles far away, the grass had taken on a blueish hue and the sky was freakish and amber-red, the rays of its ancient sun spreading colors like peacock feathers around a small theater made of black wood and reinforced with brick. His old lady and old man had been sitting like ravens on their harsh, thin cushion at the head of the carriage, their heads lowly bowed and their blackish teeth ablaze like scarred pearls in the light of their cast iron lantern. Their mouths were noisy with dark plans and their lips were split with boorish grins. They spoke quiet words of burglary and gold. Jiminy, however — why, he was silent, his eyes illuminated with many excitements as he stood in place of a corner of the carriage’s fabric roof, a smile soft and glowing on his mouth, his eyes brightly metallic with an optimism that he knew in his heart did not truly belong. A simple trip to the theater was not as it seemed to be, and that was a thought which Jiminy pondered even with the progression of the mules down the road; the bumpy, stuttering trek over the grey and rocky path. 

Despite it all — the old man and his woman working in tandem in their burglaries, her sweeping bone fingers into pockets under the shield of the dark; him standing up under the guise of relieving himself only to heave heaping red boxes from storage rooms and quietly stuff them into the carriage — Jiminy had found himself a spot near an old, black log, the air crisp and the laughter of the crowd around him almost enough to keep him blind to it. It wasn’t quite enough, of course, the laughter or the foggy, white-ish glow the clouds retained even as the sun extinguished itself and the moon rose to steal its portion of the frame. The bushes to his side could bloom with nectar-thick, magic-pink flowers whose sweet odor stomped concentration from his bumbling mind, but even then, he’d spot his mother’s hands taking advantage of the cloaking shadows where the torches did not illuminate the way. 

There was a sweet little girl to his side — one of freckles and blonde hair cut in a boyish, ragged manner and curling about her ears — and she sat with him in the farther parts of the viewing area where the air was colder and the woods began their bunching upward climb. Jiminy noticed how she laughed most at the violence being shown on the faraway stage. The smallest puppet, appearing dark and gaunt beneath its sinister cloaks, cleared half of the stage as a result of a firm blow of magic. ‘I’ve got the wand to do you in,’ the hero was bellowing, ‘and all I’ve got to do is - this!’ A crackle; a spit of blue and shimmering fire (it was a part that mesmerized Jiminy: the elaborate effects and the deftness with which they were so effortlessly employed) and the girl was on her back, clutching her hungry stomach and rolling in the dark and supple dirt. It’s a wonder, Jiminy had thought with a flash of his eyes in her direction, whether she had anyone to look after her. And though he returned his gaze to focus on the activities onstage, his mind pondered the possibilities of suffering and mistreatment that could be taking place in her life. His thoughts tripped over the topic of her enjoyment of violence; the soft, sad downturn of her bottom lip upon the mention of an ailing grandfather, and he’d soon created an entire tale of stolen coins and hasty tree-climbing to pin to her past — a past which he was gone too soon to dig into. 

Jiminy was lifting himself from the dirt just as the show was nearing its final act. The old man was nursing the sores in his shoulders beneath his heavy dark jacket, and his wife was handling the silver coins she’d collected in the red palm of her hand. ‘Oh, my dear, why we haven’t encountered much of a trouble along our way, now have we? Seamless travels, loud performances, and dark, mysterious clouds and glowing stars to distract the crowd?’ She was hiking her dress very slightly as she settled herself into the box seat, and then her hands were on the old man’s back, smoothing down the bumps in his bones through the shoddy material of his clothing. He was swatting the mules’ meaty backs and getting the carriage to turn quietly backward as the show was reaching its colorful and explosive crescendo. She was kneading the pain from his joints as if caring for a prized sheep’s wool. ‘We’ve had it easy, love.’

In the box seat, there was only room for two. The rest of the carriage could sleep, at most, three at a time, and when the spoils were bountiful, there was room for one and one only — two if the parties were exhausted enough. Jiminy was there with his knees in the blanket-covered hay, moving back and forth and rotating himself as the wheels made their slow turn on the ground with the procession of the mules’ lackadaisical movement. Jiminy was attaching belts and ropes and rusted chains to hug the boxes into their positions, counting on the shadows to be dark enough to hide the horde once the butt of the carriage turned to the crowd, visible and vulnerable. Between the boxes, he left a small opening through which one could climb in and out. The theatre and its strong, light-colored bricks and black wood receded as they left into the woods, the only sign of its presence being the distant, echoing wooshes of magic and spellcasting; the wicked, luminous pinks and tidal blues reaching forth with translucent bellies and spilling bright light over the audience’s white and captivated faces. And Jiminy, with empty pockets and clean hands, had whispered a thanks to the stars as he often did, though his place among stolen items rather soured the experience. 

He was here — a brief number steps away from two mules and a saddle and a leather pack and a cargo of valuables; a rain-soggy night and a deep, heavy world to hide in. There were flowers to smell and there was the pounding of rain to be heard banging on the dense throngs of leaves that obscured the massive skies. There were people sleeping in the village and there was resting ambition in his parents’ hearts. There was swirling, spinning wind and a castle not too far away; a name on the tip of Jiminy’s tongue and  _ in _ him, there was a reason to simply go away. In Jiminy, there was no small amount of guilt to pay for his thoughts. There was anxiety wound in the center of his stomach, thick and bombastic inside him, for no matter the sweet-smelling roil of the village's kindling rising through the dampness in flames come dawn, there were still tricks to be played by his parents. Weakly, he wondered things that he often wondered when such times would come as a path for his departure was made so neatly clear. He wondered of their stony hearts and wondered if they would wake up changed, new, fresh, forgiven. Jiminy thought of morning dew and thick forest scents come the passage of the storm, and he wondered, for a moment, whether they would wake up and stop for an instant to smell it all; maybe take a cherry from the dirt and wipe it on their stolen winter coats to taste the bitterness of their tresspasses; the sweetness of liberation from greed. 

The night was heavy and newly-sprung, but it felt deep for its youth. It would last for many hours. He made his steps quiet; tried a bone-loosening stint in the rain as he shed the odd white blanket and lifted his umbrella to halt the wetness and the cold. The umbrella was a canopy for a moment. The chains and ropes were fairly quiet in their removal, though they were chains and ropes and never was such a thing so quiet when there wasn’t a terrible storm to outroar it. His hands moved in haste, untying knots and taking long strips of rope and metal, hefting them over his shoulder as his eyes lingered on leather packs and thought of gold and food for the road. Pongo was heavy on the supple dirt ground, the water red as blood around her hooves, the hair of her feet stained with cherry juice and bleeding rain. Jiminy moved quickly over the ground, stamping in the mud with worn shoes and tying things around the young mule, over her saddle, around her middle, all the while sparing her the pain of heavy chains digging into her back and her sides. He left the chains in the dirt. She snorted a dangerous noise as he did it, and the boxes seemed too heavy on her back even in the dark, when Jiminy could hardly see them. Through his grimacing smile, he was telling her to hush, his lips tight with guilt he couldn’t mask in the wild churning of his breaths — not even with the rain slapping into his eyes and tearing off the tears from his skin. The mule’s white face was long and speckled with large black spots, her eyes a pair of large brown things that watched with wavering focus. She was tilting her head; snorting again, and, tying the boxes securely onto her, Jiminy still fretted over the baritone noise even through the rain. He was weaving to the carriage entrance and back again, loading four, five boxes onto the mule until the rain had drenched him through the few holes in his umbrella, making his clothes stick like tar to his skin.

There was a heavy leather bag in the center of the ground in the carriage. It lay on two slabs of wood in a pile of damp dust, its mouth gaping, empty of all but a coarse, wound-up brown cloak lined with dark, old fur on the inside; long enough to sweep to the ground when worn; huge enough to wind once around the shoulders and leave room for a hood. He emptied the pack of the cloak and wound it over himself, his body wet and tired beneath it; the trim sweeping against the ground and remaining untucked in his haste. He pushed a meal of food, a small handful of coins, a fell torch, and a few empty vials into the pack. He was unsteady on his feet when he made it into the rain, the umbrella a weak roof above him as the wind and water lifted its wood stretchers and ribs. He wrapped Pongo’s rope around his wrist thrice; tucked his spectacles into the wetness of his shirt collar beneath the scratchy, sodden cloak around his shoulders. He took his eyes back to the carriage as soon as Pongo started moving in line with his own steps. He traced the red wood with his eyes. How bountiful were the scents in the forest. Bold were the ant hills and the shadowed grass and the sweet, nectar-thick flowers that bloomed bigger every minute. There were soft voices in the village a while away — or there would be come dawn. There would be crickets with damp bodies in the deep green fields, and they’d swim in the puddles in search of dry stones and wet logs on which to bask in the sun come any hint of any warmth. Jiminy would notice these things. He would see them. He would hear the wind singing in the hollow, heavy logs. His parents would not.

Or maybe there was a change to be had. A rediscovery, Jiminy thought — an awakening; a bold and bright development! It was a thought that had him smiling beneath the cover of rain and tears that swept across his face as he walked with his eyes low, his mule heavy and loaded behind him. Why, there was beauty in this world that they hadn’t yet dreamed of. There was a wish in Jiminy’s heart: that when he would leave, they wouldn’t be blind. That they could smell the nectar on the flowers. That they could see the twinkling golden-blue of stars captured in the gold nets of cumulus clouds at night.

Jiminy walked on with a stinging hunch in his shoulders, his umbrella black and ruined overhead, its flaps and spreaders held high like flags or hands. He left his people behind him and left their love, too. Or really, he wondered, watching his boots stamp black prints into the soil, was there any love that they had for him at all? There was love inside them - Jiminy knew that for certain - he simply wasn’t sure if the same love had ever extended to him, or, at the very least, their actions involving him. He could feel their love between each-other on the worst of days, when the air was cold and the carriage was as empty as their stomachs and coin purses. He heard questioning concern in the lilt of the other’s voice when one was ailing with sickness or frustrated by the dealings of the harsh and wearisome day, and he heard harmony in their crooked voices when they clutched arms and laughed with one another, no matter the harshness of the topic. They thieved and planned together by the light of white candles, a hand soft as cotton on the other one’s back as they both leaned in to jot scrambled, incomprehensible lists and writings. 

Jiminy himself had always been loped somewhere inside those lists, with the old lady’s deft hands scrubbing pockets for coin, the old man’s mouth speaking to people of tools and fine foolishness, and Jiminy made to look the part of a well-meaning gentleman. It was hardly what he was: well-meaning, sweet, and honorable — but it was a role they’d told him that his appearance fit into, and that was a thing that colored the experiences all the bitterer. It had been a while since the trees had looked so empty and the forest had felt so light upon him, even with the rain drenching his cloak cold as ice and shedding endless pressure upon Pongo’s back. Jiminy never once had had his parents’ love mistaken, and it was rather a burden that trudged along with him. It was not a bad thing, nor was it particularly uplifting to him, as it more served to deepen and widen the rift between them and himself. They knew of love, but not of the love of which Jiminy had grown so terribly fond. It was not the love of plucking flowers or bringing water to a boil, watching firelight glitter orange through mist between the breaks in the trees. It was not the love that hung over one who felt it, clutching them close and guarding them from the darkness of the world like a curtain or a blanket or a blindfold. It was not precautionary love that could be found in the upward turn of someone’s smile; in the soft, gentle red of a girl’s cheeks.

It was the love of loyalty. Jiminy knew of it and had known of it since a very young age. And it was different than conventional love. Loyalty was zipping the lips and it was keeping quiet with his footsteps; it was scurrying in the forest, not so loud as to stir the fallen leaves when the black coats’ torches came sweeping over the dark paths near the gardens and cottages. Loyalty was not speaking of trespassing or dropping his lockpicks into the soil where they could be found by lawmen. Loyalty was planting a kiss on his mother’s forehead when she swept the coins from his small, soil-covered hand and called him a good boy right before the world went dark. There was indeed the scent of flowers staining every puff and every breath and every gasp of the old winds in the forest, but it was taking on a smell as ripe and as dark as the cherries which had turned Pongo’s hooves a powdery red. Jiminy thought to himself that perhaps what they’d given him was not loyalty at all - or even love, or even compassion. Why, Jiminy thought of even the few silver coins they’d placed into his palm on a brisk summer evening, sending him to a stall to purchase a toy that, in the end, was only to be handed off for a price far too steep to a person who was perhaps even more deserving of mercy or love than Jiminy could ever claim to be.


End file.
